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That's funny but I associated the title with something completely different than what I read in the article. When the author starts talking about politics and
by INTPenis 12y ago
That's funny but I associated the title with something completely different than what I read in the article.
When the author starts talking about politics and systems frozen in time I can't help but think about how the real frozen system is our political system.
We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our entire documented history.
The old satirical images of class hierarchies in the shape of pyramids come to mind.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- garethsprice 12y ago"We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our entire documented history." In terms of documented history, democracy is still a young experiment - after outright tribalism, monarchism was the dominant system until a wave of revolutions between the 18th-20th centuries. Democracy is changing rapidly (in historical terms) - the "digital trackers", Citizens United, creation and repeal of the Voting Rights Act. These will all have far-reaching implications. A world with a "new political system almost weekly" would be mired in violent localized revolution and tribalism, which is how humanity lived for far longer than they've lived under representative democracy.
- INTPenis 12y agoI never said democracy specifically. I meant in a broader sense the systems where a minority have centralized power over a majority of largely unorganized masses.